High school had just been something she had to do before she moved to Los Angeles. By then, Dee and her sister were living in Panama City Beach, working part-time at The Siesta to help their dad. The performing arts department at their high school was a dismal fiefdom lorded over by a nasty woman with a drinking problem who was more interested in casting sons and daughters of friends then putting on memorable shows. Dee didn’t mind so much that her responsibilities at the hotel prevented her from appearing in plays or musicals produced by Evelyn Nosworthy. Blech.
Dee’s senior quote in the yearbook had been the one from Marilyn Monroe about not deserving her at her best if you couldn’t handle her at her worst. She was the only one in her class to receive two senior superlatives: Best Looking and Most Likely to Be Cast on The Real World.
The weekend Dee finally moved to California was the same weekend Britney Spears was all over every television set in America for her whirlwind 48-hour marriage in Las Vegas to some mediocre dude from Louisiana.
Dee hadn’t been able to leave for Hollywood right after high school like she’d planned to. There had always been a reason to wait. Her father needed her, or her sister convinced her to try junior college first, which had been a disaster.
She was twenty-two years old and it was now or never.
Dee watched the news of Britney’s nuptials while sitting on the edge of a queen-sized bed inside a Motel 6 near Hollywood Boulevard. She’d stripped the scratchy comforter, that reeked of cigarettes, off the bed and she sat cross legged on the off-white sheets, a Styrofoam container of Chinese takeout balanced on her lap.
She’d driven across the country for four days in a 1988 Chrysler LeBaron convertible she’d bought three weeks ago. It didn’t have a CD player, so Dee bought a small boombox at Walmart and sat it on the cracked leather passenger seat, so she could have music to listen to during the eight hours she’d driven every day to finally get to the City of Angels. Radio stations fading in and out and boring old men droning on about politics weren’t the right soundtrack for her voyage to stardom.
Meg had attempted to change her mind about the whole thing up until the very end.
“You’ve never even been there,” Meg had explained for the millionth time since Dee had expressed her intentions of relocating over six months ago. “LA isn’t Panama City Beach. There are like twenty-million people there or something, and you won’t know a single one of them.”
“You act like that’s a bad thing,” Dee had replied as she threw an overstuffed black suitcase she could barely zip shut into the trunk of the car. “That excites me.”
“You’ll get lost among them. Or murdered. You don’t even have a place to live!”
“It’s easier to find a place to live when you’re physically there. How am I supposed to apply for apartments while I’m still here?” Dee said as she slammed the trunk. “I’ll figure it out.”
“Apartments?” Meg laughed. “How are you going to afford an apartment in LA without a job? The cost of living there is insane. And you have no money.”
“I have enough to get started,” Dee sighed. “I’ve saved every penny I’ve made the last six months.”
“You think two-thousand bucks is going to last longer than a month?” Meg said. She followed Dee as she headed back toward the house. “You’ve never lived on your own— it’s expensive.”
“What would you know about it?” Dee turned and snapped at her, causing Meg to stop in her tracks. “You’re just like me, you’ve never not lived with Dad. At least I’m doing something about it. You just want me to stay so you won’t feel bad about yourself.”
Meg narrowed her eyes. “Screw you. That was a really awful thing to say, Dee.”
Dee closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. You’re just stressing me out, Meg. Can’t you just believe in me? For once? This is what I’ve wanted my whole life. And I asked you to come with me, even begged you to.”
“You know I can’t go,” Meg said. “Dad needs one of us to stick around. And the thought of LA makes me dry-heave.”
“Exactly. What am I supposed to do?” Dee continued. “Stay here and work the front desk of The Siesta the rest of my life? Take reservations, deal with angry people from Alabama who don’t want to pay the final bill, all while their cousins from Mobile steal every damn towel in the place, and then help the maids clean the rooms again because one of them showed up to work high on meth? What, and then marry some guy who sets up chairs on the beach at one of the resorts? Maybe a deckhand on one of the shrimp or oyster boats? Are you kidding me? I’d regret it forever. That can’t be my life.”
The sisters walked up the front steps together and into the house. Their father was at the motel, like usual. Dee had promised him she’d stop by before leaving town. He’d long since given up on convincing her not to leave.
She’d said her goodbyes and promised them she’d be back one day, but it would be as someone else— someone she didn’t even know yet.
And now Dee had made it— this far anyway. She’d rented the Motel 6 room for three nights. She was hopeful she could at least find a roommate by then. She’d budgeted her money, so she could make it last as long as possible. That meant she’d only eat once a day, and not at all on Sundays, but it would be worth it. Back home, churches sometimes had potluck lunches after Sunday service. They had to have churches in the City of Angels, right?
Every famous person started like this, is what Dee told herself. She had to pay her dues, just like plenty of others had done before her.
Seeing Britney on the television reminded her of what was possible. She was a small-town southern girl who’d made it, after all.
If Britney could do it, so could Dee.
Nineteen
In 2004 one of the few ways to find a roommate in a new city was through Craigslist. There were other roommate matching sites, but Craigslist didn’t charge her to contact the person who had placed the ad, which was all Dee could ask for.
By the time she’d gotten to LA, paid for three nights in her meager motel room, plus food, she’d whittled her savings down to slightly more than $1700.
Dee knew if she wanted to last here, she needed to find a place to live and a job as soon as possible.
She’d found the closest public library to the motel and reserved a computer for two hours, so she could write down and research everything she could about the areas of town people lived in that were listing the rooms. She was floored at how much it cost just to live in an apartment with three other people sharing two bedrooms.
Dee tried not to let it get her down, but it was the first of many wake-up calls she’d have those first weeks in LA.
After emailing back and forth with various women (she’d promised her father she wouldn’t have male roommates, it was the one thing he asked of her: “Men are trouble. Just make your life and my life easier and live with girls.”) Dee zeroed in on a young woman named Rachel Delaney who lived in Los Feliz, one of the safer areas of town, from what Dee understood. The apartment was a short driving distance to Burbank and Studio City, two of the places Dee’s research said that people auditioned for things. She’d read about it in a dated and beat up copy of a book on making it in Hollywood from the Bay County library back in Panama City Beach.
Dee imagined how many people had picked up that very book and never done what she was doing right now.
That made her proud. She tried to remember that on the tough days. There would be many of those.
Rachel Delaney’s apartment was about a fifteen-minute drive from the Motel 6, despite being only 3 miles away. The one thing Dee had quickly learned about LA was that going anywhere would always take three times longer than you expected. The traffic really was as awful as Jay Leno joked about on The Tonight Show.
All Dee knew about Rachel before arriving at her apartment to meet her for the first time was that she was twenty-three years old and had just moved to LA six months ago, after graduating college from the University of Minne
sota. Rachel was from some place called Minnetonka and the one semi-pixelated photo she’d uploaded of herself showed a very pretty girl with long blonde hair and big teeth.
Rachel had insisted on meeting Dee as soon as possible. Her roommate had apparently skipped town in the middle of the night right before rent was due, putting Rachel in quite the bind. If they got along, Rachel was hoping Dee could move in right away. Rent would be $850 a month, but it included all utilities and Dee would have her own room. Plenty of ads had been cheaper, but they’d all been for shared rooms, and the thought of sharing a room with a stranger made Dee uneasy.
“Hiiiiii!” Rachel greeted Dee at the door that evening wearing a very tight pair of incredibly low-rise jeans and a tiny, hot pink, polo shirt that stopped right above her unnaturally tan, pierced navel. Rachel was tall, probably close to six feet, and that was without shoes on. Her blonde hair was longer than in the photo and she had chunky highlights, a hair fad that Dee hoped didn’t last much longer.
“Hi, thanks for having me over,” Dee replied, and Rachel swooped in for a hug, something Dee hadn’t expected. She returned the embrace, hopeful that it would increase her chances of getting Rachel’s approval.
“Of course! Thanks for coming over on such short notice!” Rachel chirped. She motioned for Dee to follow her into the living room.
It was a cozy apartment which Rachel clearly kept up with, cleaning wise. It was spotless and smelled like citrus. The carpeting was cream colored and there were two couches, both made of what looked like denim material. There was a glass coffee table with some magazines scattered across it and a large rear projection TV in the corner next to a sliding patio door covered in white vertical blinds. The television was on, but it was on mute. Dee could see Rachel had been watching 7th Heaven, a show Meg had always liked, making Dee sad for a second thinking about her sister, alone back in Florida.
She followed Rachel to the tiny kitchen off the living room where Rachel poured them both glasses of white wine. Dee couldn’t help but feel like this was a grown up’s apartment, something she could be proud to come home to every day.
The rent would be tough to make since Dee planned on working only part-time, so she could focus on auditioning and doing what it would take to get discovered.
But she could pull it off, she was sure of it.
Rachel hopped onto the kitchen counter to sit. She rested her feet against the cupboards below her, and Dee noticed she had on numerous toe rings.
She smiled at Dee and lifted her drink, a hint for Dee to clink their glasses together.
“So, tell me about yourself, Dee!” Rachel said. “You’re such a hottie, I’m guessing you moved here to model? Act?”
Dee nodded. “I want to be an actress, yes.”
“Cool! My old roommate wanted to be a screenwriter. Boringgggg!” Rachel snorted. Dee wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she just smiled.
“She was ugly too. I feel like the uglies always move here to be writers,” Rachel said, and Dee cringed.
Yikes.
“Sorry,” Rachel seemed to realize how she sounded. “I’m such a mean person. I’m just soooo mad at her, you know? She just, like, left. With no warning. It’s just not okay. Right?” Rachel gazed at Dee, clearly needing to hear her concur.
“Totally not okay,” Dee agreed, suddenly wondering if maybe she should take the ex-roommate’s fleeing as a warning.
But the apartment was nice and close to so many things.
“What did you move to LA for?” Dee asked, attempting to change the subject. Rachel seemed like someone who would enjoy talking about herself anyway.
Sure enough, Rachel lit up.
“I’m here to become an entertainment news reporter,” Rachel responded. “Like Maria Menounos. Or Mary Hart, but like, way younger. I want to, like, interview people on the red carpet and host awards shows and stuff. It’s why I got my degree in journalism.”
“That’s awesome,” Dee said, taking a long drink of her wine. Between Rachel’s vocal fry and heavy midwestern accent— not to mention her liberal use of the word like— Dee wasn’t sure who would hire Rachel to do anything on camera, bless her, but that didn’t matter. Dee could play the part of supportive roommate as long as it meant she had a place to live.
And Rachel was very attractive, despite her best efforts at hiding it under spray tans and heavy eyeliner. Dee could see how she ended up here. Rachel was probably a big fish up in Minnetonka.
“Yeah, so anyway, you’re from Florida?” Rachel asked, sliding off the counter and walking back to the living room. Dee finished the last of her wine and placed the glass in the sink before following her to the denim couches where they both sat across from each other.
“I am,” Dee replied. “Panama City Beach.”
“Oh my God isn’t that where, like, people go on spring break?” Rachel shrieked. “I almost went last year, but my dad wouldn’t let me! I was so bummed, he was worried I’d, like, get drunk and end up on TV with my top off, grinding on some hottie and I was like, um, duh, if I’m lucky!”
Holy hell, Rachel was a lot.
“Yep,” Dee said. “Spring break capital of America. My family owns a motel down there, so we get a lot of spring breakers.”
“Oh my God, your family owns a hotel?” Rachel asked, her eyes wide. “So, wow, you must be pretty well off. That’s good, my ex-roommate was broke, she never had any money, it was always a problem. She’d try to make me feel bad because I don’t have to work, my dad pays my rent, but it’s like, how is that my fault? He’s supporting my dreams and I was just like, I’m sorry your parents are like, dead or something, but I can’t help it that mine have money and they want to help me.” Rachel rolled her eyes and Dee had no idea what she was supposed to say.
Part of Dee was inwardly screaming at her to leave, to get the hell out of this apartment and to never look back. But another part of her was afraid what else was out there in the land of Craigslist roommates. Sure, Rachel was clearly vapid and terrible, but she wasn’t dangerous. Dee could look at this as her first lesson in acting— pretending to enjoy the company of her roommate, who apparently assumed she was rich, which she wasn’t.
Not by a long shot.
“In that case,” Rachel continued. “I won’t make you fill out an application. My dad is pressuring me to, like, prove you can pay and stuff, but clearly you can if your family owns a hotel. And I just really get a good vibe from you. You’re hot and I just think we’ll get along. Do you want to see your room?”
And just like that, within 48 hours of arriving, Dee Beckett had a place to live in Los Angeles.
Twenty
Dee moved into Rachel’s apartment two days later. She’d had to get a mattress and bed frame from a Rent-A-Center in Little Armenia, but it was free delivery with “low” weekly payments, and Dee figured she’d have plenty of money coming in before the 90 days same-as-cash offer expired.
Still, her savings had swiftly fallen to below $900. She was good for the next couple of weeks, but she really needed to get a job. Unlike Rachel, Dee didn’t have a daddy benefactor. Behind the apartment, her clunky LeBaron was parked next to Rachel’s 2003 Audi, which struck her as a clear indicator of their differences and where they’d come from.
But it didn’t bother Dee. Almost every story she’d ever heard about the people who became big stars involved them being broke and starving. Rachel’s privilege, if nothing else, was a disadvantage if the typical Hollywood fairy tale was to be believed. People like Rachel who’d been given everything their entire lives weren’t the ones that made it, because the universe could see they didn’t need it as badly. After all, they had back up plans for their back up plans. They didn’t know what it was like to need or want anything.
They didn’t know what it was like to be afraid.
Dee had never worked anywhere other than the motel.
Her father had inherited it when Dee was fourteen years old, and he’d put her and Meg to work right away.
There wasn’t a job she hadn’t done at the motel at some point, from washing linens, to unclogging toilets, to making new keys when guests inevitably lost them while hopping across the hot, white powder sand of the panhandle beaches.
Dee and Meg had been fill-in employees, but without the paycheck. Things just needed to be done and they were expected to work and not complain about it.
“One day this will all be yours,” Dad would say. “You’re investing in yourselves and your future.”
After high school, they’d been put on the books and made official employees. Dee had preferred to work the mid-day shift. She liked to check in guests, especially if they were hot guys from places like Mobile and Valdosta. It was her way of scoping out her entertainment for the week.
Now that she was job-hunting in LA, she missed it just a little bit. Working the front desk at The Siesta had been a job with very little pressure or responsibility. Sometimes she’d meet the guests for drinks on the beach, especially if those guests happened to be college baseball players from Georgia. Or Tennessee. That was even better.
She’d put a sign on the front door that read “Be Back in 15 Minutes” and she wouldn’t come back for an hour— and when she did, she was tipsy off the sun and the booze. As an employee anywhere else, she’d be in jeopardy of being fired. At The Siesta she knew the worst she’d ever get would be a disapproving shake of her father’s head, which she could inevitably cure with an apology and a hug.
Florida was a slower pace of living. Nothing needed to be done right away. No one was in a hurry. Dee hadn’t appreciated it until she’d left it.
In LA, people started honking at you to go before the light even turned green. No one smiled at you when you passed them on the sidewalk. The beaches were enormous, just wide swaths of sand and no one bothered to get in the water unless they were surfers because the Pacific was so cold.
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